Vestibule 102

NOW PLAYING is 24 Frames Per Second, a video invitational organized by Gayle Forman, Suzanne Peterson and Charlotte Potter. It features clips from more than a dozen artists. That's James Akers above, playing his miniature electric glass cello.

Just inside the Glass Studio's front door is a gallery we call Vestibule 102. It's an area where local artists and Studio Assistants can show off their talents. And do they ever.

NOTE: Every day we're open, we host a free glass art demonstration at noon. Artists featured in Vestibule 102 generally headline a daily demo during the run of the exhibition.

Archive: 2017

• For Portraits in Glass, Sarah Vaughn produced abstract portraits of friends by striking glass with a hammer. "Like photographs," she said, "these panels have the ability to capture the emotions of their subjects. These cracks, like a person's flaws and personality, are what allow a flat, plain piece of plate glass to become dynamic, intriguing, and beautiful." Here's one such portrait and here's an overall view.

• Hannah Kirkpatrick collaborated with Brett Henrikson on a project combining glass art and photography. Eye Camera is a glass box in which five sides are ambrotypes, positive silver images made on black glass. The final side is a collodion-coated plate, a negative silver image on clear glass. They drilled a hole on the ambrotype opposite the collodion plate to turn the box into a pinhole camera, and used the camera to take 16 pictures of the same North Carolina landscape at different exposures, a worked called Eye Scape. Because the camera includes a plate collodion image of a closed eye on one one side, the prints always superimposed a positive image of the eye on the negative image of the landscape.

• As a companion to a Third Thursday performance based on optics and colors, students from the Governor's School for the Arts exhibited their foundational works here. For an overall view of the work by Megan Hough, Abigail Signs, Abi Pierce, Angela Bird, Noelani Christy, Jeanelle Estanislao, and Devyn Hoshour, click here.

• For a month the exhibition space was held by a group show featuring our Spring 2017 Glass Studio Assistants. It included a Samuel Spees work, Luce del Sole, which is detailed here and shown in full here.

• Staci Vella Katsias was formally trained in chiropractic medicine and spent two decades in private practice in Virginia Beach. In the 21st century, she's been studying drawing, painting, ceramics, printmaking, and most recently, glass. Here are seven of the nine works on display, and for close-ups of two of them, click here and here.

• Kelsey Finnie described her installation Organizing Chaos as part of a life choice to turn loss and loneliness into wonder and enjoyment. She said just as life seems to be a constant state of flux, so to glass as it moves from molten to rigid form. Here's a wider view.

• James Akers, Emily Bartelt and Gayle Forman joined together for a splashy neon work called Train City.

• From the Governor's School for the Arts, two installations of three works by two students. For Inner City Funk, Patrick Zaremski mixed photographic negatives and positives "to evoke the raw emotions of the city." Ashley Fleenor'sThe Winter Response was inspired by the loneliness of a rural mountain town in winter.

• For One Road, One America, Kathy Little used kiln-formed, powdered screen-printed glass to create what she called a "highway of visual stimulation." Played out against a backdrop of a giant American flag,"Roads, automobiles, signs, and laws are undeniably American, with their bright contrasting color and concrete bases," Little said. "Viewed together in close proximity, the effect is overwhelming and chaotic—much like the political atmosphere of the present."

• A cooperative effort here, as the young artists of the Ghent Middle School Art Club worked with Studio Assistants on this mosaic. Here's a closeup, and here's a wider view.

• The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals mounted a special photo exhibition called In Our Own Backyard. The exhibit was part of a campaign to end the practice of chaining dogs, a sadness captured in these photos by volunteers in the field. For a wider view of the exhibition, click here. The exhibition week was capped by a special, canine-themed glass art demonstration by Kristi Totoritis.

• Young artists from Truitt Intermediate School in Chesapeake crafted a variety of glassblown items in a workshop here. Here's how they did.

• Liana Graham had five works on view, including Best in Show. She's an ODU and JMU graduate who teaches at the Governor's School for the Arts, and she recently opened a gallery in MacArthur Center.

• Haptic Interitance by Ali Feeney tied together two families by way of one woman. In this wide view you can see the hand-sewn map tracing both a birth and an adopted family. The installation was a tender, touching look at the incredible lure of connection.

• Madisyn Zabel said she wanted to explore "the visual collision of opposing forces; positive and negative, volume and flatness, light and shadow." Here's how it looked.

• The Devil's Doorbell by Jade Usackas was an expression of self exploration and femininity inspired by the Jack in the Pulpit vases of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Usackas said she wanted to use decorative techniques and familiar forms "to resist traditional displays of femininity ... and counter negative notions surrounding female sexuality." For a closer view, click here.

• Sarah Todd based her glass sculptures on the canopic jars of ancient Egyptians. Visitors were invited to write their regrets on the paper, slip the regrets into a jar, and then move on to a brighter future.

• A pair of works from Kimberly McKinnis, one based on cards left at the Museum's Response Station and one based on Museum data. Here's how it looked.

• In Vacancies, Kayla Ohlmer recreated a backyard scene where the emphasis was on the people missing from the scene. As to the glass laundry, Ohlmer said: "The red shirts symbolize the violence committed by the offender, while the white represents the innocence of the target." Here's a picture of the artist with her work.

• Vestibule 102 became Area 51 in Taylor Thornton's installation Abduction. He cleverly framed his blown glass flying saucers with great UFO headlines of history. For a closeup view of his glass work, click here.

• Glass Studio artists are encouraged to find inspiration in pieces from the Chrysler Collection. Undine Wiggling was Gayle Forman's take on Chauncey Bradley Ives' Undine Rising from the Fountain. Forman 3-D modeled the statue with a phone app, made a cast, then cast her piece in rubber. Her movie of a classic marble sculpture now swaying and wiggling by magic is shown here as seen through the front window. For a clearer view, click here.

• Shown here is a close-up of a three-part work by Kristi Totoritis. It's a piece of memento mori, and you can see a wider view of the entire installation here.

• Tim Spurchise called his work "Dark Star," which is another term for black hole. Take a look at it here. It's a 2016 work of blown glass with copper shavings, cast aluminum, and steel. Said Spurchise: "Our place in the universe on this lonely blue planet is fragile, much like the fragility of glass."

• If there's one single word to describe the work of Van Eric Harned it would be "heartfelt," which is fitting considering this Vestibule 102 installation. You can click here for a detail. Click here for a wider view.

We had a run of non-glass artists exhibit here because it was a great way to promote our friends in the local artistic community.

A work by Avery Shaffer. Click to enlarge.

• The Official Best Friend of the Chrysler Museum Glass Studio, Echard Wheeler, is a videographer and photographer who has played a key role in documenting our success. So it was only proper to display a wall of his photographs in our vestibule gallery, and here's one that was on view. For more on the work of this talented commercial, portrait, and wedding photographer, click here, here, here, or here.

• In Present, a collection of oil-on-wood pieces, Carson Grubaugh said he wanted to create "a more immediate relationship with the viewer" by focusing on the surfaces themselves. As he put it: "They present the present moment as the present is."

• City of My Dreams by Alan Jelercic was a mixed media work that included found objects. The ODU-educated, Virginia Beach-based artist and illustrator considers "walking among the Urban Fabric my greatest source of inspiration." For an overall view, click here.

In terms of glass artists:

• For Three Madonnas, Carolyn Riley combined different glass processes, artful staging and three generations of women to produce a heartwarming tribute to family.

2015

• James Akers describes himself as a hacker-artist. In this bit of science-meets-art, he used molten glass to conduct electrical current and then used the changing resistance in the cooling glass to generate sound. This video shows the process and this picture shows him preparing the video installation for public view.

• Kayla Ohlmer called her installation Public Laundry. She said "the newly cleaned fabric represents hope for transformation and progress, while the remaining stains attest to the futility of our efforts to change the past."

• Our Summer Studio Assistants presented a group show in Vestibule 102, and we start with a detail of a work by Teri Bailey called Mending. You can click here to see how Suzanne Peterson handled her glass flower, click here for a work by Ali Feeney, and click here for Luke Stone's creation. The installation also included a cartographical work by Trevor Lewis, a beautifully patterned form by Nathan Windley, and a neon work by James Akers.

A work by Karl Jones. Click to enlarge.

• Ali Rogan is a well-known glass artist on the Peninsula. This installation, Sacred Spaces, consisted of five items made from cast glass, pate de verre, and anodized aluminum. Here's one work pictured up close.

• For Glass as Paint, Jessie Sommer recycled old glass left behind by Studio artists, students and volunteers. Click here to see a work in detail.

• Inspired by works of fine porcelain, an atlas of cylinders by Hilary Wang traced the coastlines of five cities onto glass. She called her installation Conundrum of Coastlines.

• Tim Spurchise found inspiration in multiple pieces from the Chrysler collection. He made many different objects using many different techniques, as seen here and here, and the installation was entitled By The Hands of Men.

• Balance, by Laura McFie, explored the significance of equilibrium when it comes to extremes in emotions, ideas, values and concepts.

• In Submerge, Suzanne Peck combined cast glass and digital video. She put a cast-glass inner tube on the bottom of a swimming pool as an illustration of that which cannot be attained.

2014

In alphabetical order

• Emily Bartelt, starting from a Larry Clark photo exhibition about junkies, crafted needles and paraphernalia out of glass, recreated a scene from one of Clark's photos, and invited people to live the experience.